The usage of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to provide illumination is increasing rapidly as the costs of LEDs decrease and the endurances of the LEDs increase to cause the overall effective cost of operating LED lighting products to be lower than the overall effective costs of operating incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamps providing equivalent illumination. Also, LEDs can be dimmed by controlling the current through the LEDs because LEDs are current driven devices. The current through a plurality of LEDs in a lighting device must be controlled tightly in order to control the illumination provided by the LEDs. In order to leverage the benefit of long life of LEDs, LED drivers must also be designed to be robust under lighting surge events. Surge protection devices (SPDs) are provided to absorb energy and protect the LED driver circuit. An SPD can also fail under certain conditions (e.g., a surge event with excessive voltage). One desired feature is for an LED driver to be able to provide a failure indication mechanism in case a surge protection device (SPD) fails. Such transparent communication upon SPD failure alerts customers immediately so that a failed SPD can be replaced in a timely manner. This saves time and costs for customers who would otherwise spend lengthy time troubleshooting SPD failures, which, if unresolved, could require replacement of the entire LED driver.